


Ghosts N' Stuff

by SongsofSamael



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, if magic was fo realskies in POI
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongsofSamael/pseuds/SongsofSamael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic has awakened in the world. Creatures of supernatural interest are being hunted. Watched continuously and determined whether or not they are allowed to coexist with the remaining humans who fight back to regain their power; the supernatural community is aided by a concerned third party...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts N' Stuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverander/gifts).



John was shucking his third shredded suit into the library’s trash when he heard the faint, tell-tale sound of something (someone) ghosting through the shelves.  
“Good morning, Harold,” John said, not bothering to turn as the spirit wafted into being; bringing a cold draft of reality with him. Still dressed in the clothes he’d worn at the ferry bombing (and coincidentally; the duds he died in), Harold Finch blinked owlishly behind his glasses before adjusting them. Why a specter still needed spectacles in the afterlife was beyond even John’s calculative comprehension, but he decided not to question it.  
“Rough evening, Mr. Reese?” The ghost’s reedy voice bore the faintest traces of an echo—magnified threefold by John’s sensitive hearing. The taller man winced faintly and Harold lowered his voice with a note of detached apology. “I have tea waiting.”  
“Thanks, but I’m more of a coffee man myself,” John twitched a tired smile in Harold’s general direction, dragging his new shirt over his head with a grimace. His body twanged like a bowstring pulled taut. Every muscle sang a chorus of aches and pains he didn’t feel like dealing with right now. Like most things John didn’t feel like dealing with, the origin of said pains was pushed deep into the bottom of his chest, left to marinate with his other regrets.  
As if sensing his morose train of thought, Harold derailed John with a gentle clearing of his throat.  
“Right. I can make coffee. Although I find that, given your condition—” Harold was undeterred by the flicker of gold warning in John’s eyes. “A nice, green chai might prove more palatable. And certainly more helpful in the long run than espresso; black.”  
“I don’t have a condition, Finch,” John said, with near-fatal calm. Had the ghost any skin left; he would’ve felt it crawl with trepidation. “What I have is a headache. A headache that needs caffeine. So if you don’t mind…” John started for the door at a steady limp, his gait cautious, but determined. Harold opened his mouth, but was cut off by Reese opening the door.  
“I’m going to…” John stalled out as he realized, too late, what Finch was trying to warn him about. Below him (a good foot below him) stood Shaw, her hands in her pockets and a scowl on her face.  
“We’ve got a situation,” she said, before elbowing past John into the library. John stood there for a moment, staring at the empty space that was the hallway to freedom; to escape, before sighing heavily and shutting the door.  
“Don’t we always,” he muttered, and turned back around.

* * *  
Sameen Shaw was a succubus.  
And she hated it.  
She was reminded of this fact whenever she put on or took off her favorite pea-coat. It used to fit her snug and secure; before her true nature started to manifest, granting her a pair of wings and a tail that made life that much harder for the compact assassin. Every time she shed the coat (as she did now, in the library, only because the coat had begun to stifle her with heat (thanks, built-in down comforter that was the pair of wings aforementioned), she also shed feathers. It made making herself untraceable that much more time-consuming.  
The wings (shrike coloring, for those keeping track), were the least of her problems, however. Despite having surfed the web a few times in her life to determine just who and what she was, Shaw found that her demisexuality did little to assuage her uncanny abilities to suddenly induce lust at the touch of a hand. Or if she breathed too hard; or looked at people funny. At least, that’s what it felt like. Perhaps it was slightly over-exaggerated, but it got in the way of everything else.  
As did the horns on her head. The short, stuck-up kid-goat horns dark brown in hue that her beanies barely obscured. At least the tail was manageable. Shaw kept it looped around her midsection, usually hooked over the butt of one of her many guns. Or the hilt of a blade. It was prehensile, and useful, upon occasion.  
The rest the universe or Hell or whatever could’ve kept, but sadly, she was stuck with it all.  
Just like she was stuck with Fido and Harold the friendly ghost.  
“What’s the situation, Ms. Shaw?” Harold was asking her. Shaw shook herself out of her internal monologue and frowned faintly.  
“A nuisance in the form of Root.” There was a collective moment of exasperated silence broken only by John sipping his coffee.  
Ah, Root.  
Root was a whole other problem.  
The last time the team had run into her, she had been trying to stuff Harold into a supernatural processor. Something about “ghost in the shell”. She thought by binding the spirit to an android form, Harold might be more functional to those around him. She hadn’t understood why he seemed so reluctant to try the idea, and presumed he just needed encouragement.  
The vampire was persistent that way.  
“She disagreed with the council on policing the American people that was held in Washington recently,” said Shaw.  
“And?” Reese asked dryly from over the top of his mug. “What else is new?” Shaw looked at him with all the calm of a practiced killer.  
“She drained the committee.”  
“Oh.” John and Harold chorused.  
The room was silent again. Then…  
“Carter and Fusco?” Finch asked faintly.  
“Already on it.”  
* * *  
Joss Carter’s coffee stirred itself absently as she sifted through her files. The caramel macchiato had seen better days; with its adornments melted and its liquid cooling on her desk. Joss preferred black anyway, but the new intern at the precinct seemed to insist she needed something sweeter. Joss had half a mind to tell him where he could sweetly stick his Starbucks obsession, but she refrained. Mostly because she was too busy with important things to bother hexing an innocent zombie.  
“Head’s up.” Fusco’s raspy tenor caught Joss’s attention, and she quickly shut her files. The last time Fusco had said something like that to her, it’d been followed by the depositing of evidence in the form of an orc head on her desk. Luckily, all Lionel had brought with him today was a box of Krispy Kremes.  
“You shouldn’t have,” Joss sighed. The cliché of cops and donuts seemed forever lost on her partner. But Lionel had a smile in his deep-set eyes that said he might’ve finally clocked it. He just didn’t care.  
Placing the box where their two desks met, the other detective shed his coat and frowned at the faint tears where bullets had just missed him. Of the two detectives, Lionel was the lesser wizard, relying on abilities that barely caught problems in time for him to react. Joss, more natural and adept at preventative spells and protective charms, rarely looked as flustered as he did—and she had much fewer close calls. Lionel didn’t begrudge her that, however.  
He was just glad to still have her around.  
“Any word on our friend down in Washington?” he asked casually, booting up the flickering computer at his work station. Joss shrugged, peeking under the cover of the Krispy box to look for her poison of choice (sprinkles, sprinkles, and more sprinkles).  
“Silent as the grave.”  
“Ha, ha,” Lionel said without humor, slumping a little in his seat. Joss flashed him an apologetic smile as she took her donut and settled back in her own chair.  
“What about our friends in higher places?” Fusco’s eyes drifted out the window, to the towering remains of New York City, which loomed above the precinct like a forest of steel and glass and neon fire. Almost as if on-cue, a shadow too large to be anything other than their winged associate drifted across the surface of the building across the street.  
“Getting lower,” Joss replied, stopping her spoon’s incessant stirring and rising from her seat. “C’mon, Fusco. I think we’re about to have a visitation.”  
* * *  
Root liked the color red.  
She liked the way it wore on her; a long, trailing sheen of scarlet that flowed silky and sinuous across her skin. It coated her hair; a conditioning veneer that brought out the auburn in her hair. It tinted her world in a rosy hue she could no sooner release than she could her insatiable bloodlust; technological lust, and every form of lust imaginable. She was voracious; bottomless, abyssal, and she knew it.  
It was why she had strode into the meeting like she owned the place; having seen the red before she came. She’d seen it when she’d heard that humanity was trying to make a comeback. To strike out against those who opposed people like her who could peer under the mask of the world and witness the monster beneath. Who didn’t mind the ugly truth. Who always wanted something more.  
Root’s ravenous nature served her well as she ripped the throats out of congressman after congressman. Senators on chandeliers; raining red onto the white marble floor below. The secretary she let go—the woman was frail; sick, and not to be blamed for the intrusive qualities of human nature.  
Root stood in the carnage and let it coat her crimson; like war paint. Like life.  
And like most things, it still was not enough.


End file.
